Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale

Abstract

Martin haspelmath. Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale. the poznań Society for the advancement of arts and Sciences, pL In this paper, I formulate and explain a number of universal generalizations about the formation of causative verbs (overtly marked verbs with causal meaning) and anticausative verbs (overtly marked verbs with noncausal meaning). Given the "spontaneity scale" of basic verb meanings (transitive > unergative > automatic unaccusative > costly unaccusative > agentful), we can say that verb pairs with a noncausal verb higher on the scale tend to be causative pairs, and verb pairs with a noncausal verb lower on the scale tend to be anticausative pairs. I propose that these generalizations can be subsumed under form-frequency correspondence: that transitive base verbs tend to form causatives (often analytic causatives) is because they rarely occur in causal contexts, and the fact that unaccusative verbs tend to be coded as anticausatives is because they frequently occur in causal contexts, and special marking is required for the rarer and less expected situation.

Transitivity pairs in Baltic: between Finnic and Slavic

“…→ murd-u-ma (itr.). This instance of anticausative marking corresponds to the cross-linguistic trend discussed in Haspelmath (2016) (in this issue), Haspelmath et al (2014), etc. 18 The second Estonian pair included in our sample shows double marking: puru-ne-ma (itr.)…”

“…This means that if the noncausal member is more frequent, the causal member is likely to have formal (causative) marking and, conversely, if the causal member is more frequent, the noncausal member is likely to be marked (as anticausative). In Haspelmath (2016) (in this issue), the idea of a spontaneity scale related to the frequency of occurrence of a given situation as spontaneous vs. externally caused is elaborated further, and a number of implicational universals are formulated.…”

Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form–frequency correspondences and predictability

“…Subordinate clause marking with same vs. different subjects in 'want' complements 'Want' complement clauses tend to have the same subject as the main clause, so different-subject complements ('you want me to eat') are rare and unexpected. In [9] An even bigger picture that also explains the distribution of causatives and anticausatives of different types (in particular, analytic vs. synthetic causatives) in terms of form-frequency correspondences is presented in Haspelmath (2016).…”

Untitled

“…*kiou-eie/o-'to set in motion'; see LIV 2 : 394f. ), the rise of the Narten present may be associated primarily with the anticausative or/and experiential verbs lower on the spontaneity scale (see Haspelmath 2016).…”